I can’t give any of the details, but there were several incidents this week in my personal life where a few different people, observing just snippets of my actions, might very understandably get upset with me. The thing was, in each of the cases, if the people could see the bigger context and why I did what I did, then they would either have been less upset, or in some cases not angry at all.
I’m sure that has happened to all of you reading this. When you’re a little kid, you imagine you can go through life without “getting in trouble” so long as you follow a simple set of rules. But as you get older, that gets harder to do. It’s not just that you are tempted to sell out for money or whatever, but even if you are genuinely trying to be principled, or loyal to your friends, you get put in really awkward situations.
Anyway, the purpose of this post is to say that if you understand exactly what I’m talking about, then try flipping it around. In other words, there are people out there whom I’ve judged in the past, attributing the worst of motives and so forth. But I bet if I saw a movie of their lives, I would be much more understanding of why they did the things that struck me as so outrageous.